Waxidermy 100

Welcome to the world of Waxidermy; its culture, language and genres. In this chart common dollar bin vinyl rubs shoulders with Pokora-starred collectables. PINA, Ethnic, Field recordings, Co-Worker Funk and Xian private pressings stand respectfully alongside unlistenable Bonerz and super smooth Easy Glide.

It's fair to say if a genre is lacking a suitable name Waxidermy members will always invent one. The website and forum has certainly been responsible for creating worldwide interest in obscure private press recordings and prepared a ready audience for the success of the 2013 book Enjoy The Experience: Homemade Records 1958 - 1992 by Johan Kugelberg. Some small acknowledgement of this fact in the book itself would have been gracious.

Presented here are the top 108* recordings as voted for by Waxidermists themselves. The final placings are irrelevant though as there is fantastic music to savour throughout this chart from top to bottom and there is strength in depth on the substitute's bench and beyond too. More on that later...

This is a snapshot of a website...

...which has been in existence for seven years. In July 2013 forum founder Jeff Hassett opened an official poll for members to vote for recordings.

And that was as far as it went....

A poll for what exactly? The best recordings? The worst recordings? The ones that best represented the site? With no specific criteria to follow some voted for records they had first heard about on the Waxidermy site whilst others voted for records they thought had been discussed a lot since the message board began in 2006.

Many members voted regardless and the lack of specific criteria turned out to be a bonus in making the chart shown here a cool snapshot of both the website and the message boards seven year existence in cyberspace. I have to add IMHO (in my humble opinion) to that though because this is not an official Waxidermy chart. The boards moderators haven't got around to compiling it yet.

By August 25th the poll thread had already slipped to page 4 of the message board having been open since July 18th. Noting results had been static for two weeks we decided to whip up a spreadsheet and spent the morning of Sunday 26th August compiling this chart.

Unknown pleasures

Music lovers with an appetite for great under-the-radar music will quickly recognise titles from the likes of Fraser & DeBolt, Wendy & Bonnie, RAMP, Hall & Oates, Eden Ahbez and David Crosby and may know of recent reissues such as Donnie & Joe Emerson, Bob Chance, Lo Borges, and Jim Sullivan. (Palmer Rockey is reissued on Trunk Records in September 2013). But what about the rest?

With relentless zeal Waxidermists make a point of searching thrift stores, flea markets and record shops for records they know nothing about. As a community they have communicated en masse to evaluate, appreciate and celebrate music and musical artefacts few people had paid any attention to before. In doing so they have collectively created a canon of their own albeit a confusing one for non-Waxidermists to negotiate.

As a direct result of this wilful pursuit of overlooked or obscure titles much here is relatively unknown but word disseminates fast. An expanding coterie of Ebay and Discogs sellers are growing wise to adding the word Waxidermy to their sales descriptions and extra $$$ to their prices. Some Waxidermy-approved LPs are hard to find, others are very common and a select few are genuinely rare. Recordings on this chart include:

---- LPs discovered by the forum which have since been reissued by present day record labels. Being accessible now and having gone overground in the media many of these feature highly in the chart.

-----LPs from established and Waxidermy invented genres such as Xian, Gospel, Field Recordings, Bonerz, Ethnic, PINA and Easy Glide.

---- Bonerz and Easy Glide.** Given their popularity on the forum both genres appear to be under represented but in the case of the former at least that can only be a blessing.

---- CDs, including a Private Burn of sorts which was recently discovered by Waxi member Tungston Hardtip before copies sourced from the artist were sold to other Waxidermists on a Set Sale list.

---- Frat-house style in-jokes. With the kind of humour that's present in any busy and male-dominated community there’s an LP here that doesn't exist at all except in the private mind gardens of Waxidermists themselves. It features a former forum member whose confrontational but entertaining ALL CAPS posting style was directly responsible for labelling PINA as a genre.

Gruel

In true Waxidermy fashion several recordings included here are generally considered to have no musical merit whatsoever; a savage judgement, hammered on to the unsuspecting titles by Waxidermists themselves. Like any footsoldiers on a gruelling mission, trench humour is essential for survival.

Amidst the multitude of bonerz, crust and chud trawled through on a daily basis it's inevitable a select few awful recordings have risen through the ranks and become celebrated. They are totems emblematic of the welter of terds that have to be waded through in order to find fragments of worthwhile music.

A high quotient of titles here have extraordinary back stories attached to them but aside from the bonerz to be avoided there is a wealth of incredible music to savour. Generous sips of the audio juice for many of these recordings can be found scattered on various blogs throughout cyberspace.

Further reading and listening

To find out more about these recordings Forumusic will be gradually adding information about each of them to just one thread on the Forumusic Forum entitled The Waxidermy 100. We'll also include links to threads on the Waxidermy forum and other web pages that discuss them.

For our erudition as well as yours we'll try to find links to soundclips. We like many of the recordings we're familiar with but there's an awful lot we don't know about at all. Given that the chart is fascinating throughout we'll disregard the relatively easy to Google front-runners for the time being and start with the seventeen recordings that tied for the number 92 spot.

Below the titles that made it onto this chart are many others that didn't get enough votes as they weren't suggested fast enough and there are also glaring omissions. Marj Snyder, Baligh Hamdy, Hailu Mergia spring to mind. Time allowing we'll compile a thread on these and more Waxidermy-approved recordings that we feel missed the cut.

Forumusic thoroughly enjoyed compiling this chart and raises a glass to Waxidermists everywhere for contributing to one of the most entertaining and informative music forums on the planet. Here's hoping that in our copycat pursuit of Private Burns(privately-pressed CDs) we'll eventually uncover a smattering of unsung artists whose work matches the quality of some of the recordings displayed here.

** Defintion of Bonerz,Easy Glide and PINA: Don't be lazy. Join the Waxidermy Forum and use the Search function.You wont be disappointed.

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